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Archive for October 31st, 2008

Early voters wait on line to cast their ballots at the County of Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RR/CC) headquarters in Norwalk, Calif. on Friday, Oct. 31, 2008. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

WASHINGTON — Voter turnout will be the highest in decades, dwarfing recent presidential elections, experts predict. The only question dividing experts is how huge will it be. Will it be the largest since 1968, largest since 1960 or even, as one expert predicts, the largest in a century? Soaring early voting levels hint at a big turnout, but that could just be the same voters casting ballots earlier instead of more voters hitting the polls. Weather should generally be favorable, according to forecasts.

What early voting numbers mean and how much of the youth and Hispanic votes turn out are the big factors political scientists look at when trying to predict how many eligible Americans will vote.

Michael McDonald of George Mason University is so optimistic he’s predicting the highest level in a century.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Despite John McCain’s prediction of an upset, Barack Obama reached for a landslide Friday, invading his rival’s home state with TV ads and building a lead in early voting in key battlegrounds as the presidential race headed into a hectic final weekend.

McCain charged that Obama, bidding to become the first black president, “began his campaign in the liberal left lane of politics and has never left it. He’s more liberal than a senator who calls himself a socialist,” he added in Hanoverton, Ohio, a reference to Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.

Yet with the economy almost certainly in a recession and the country clamoring for change after eight years of Republican rule, even some of McCain’s allies conceded the obvious. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it would take a “major struggle for him to win” _ although he quickly added the Arizona senator had come back before when he had been counted out.

Rare flash of anger from Obama on Halloween night

CHICAGO (Reuters) – It wasn’t quite a Halloween nightmare on Obama street, but journalists on Friday drew a rare flash of anger from the normally unflappable Democratic presidential nominee.

Barack Obama had taken a break from the campaign trail for a few hours of Halloween fun at home with his family four days before the election, but ended up visibly annoyed when news crews dogged their footsteps in their Chicago neighborhood.

“That’s enough. You’ve got a shot. Leave us alone,” Obama told reporters as he walked down the block with his 7-year-old daughter Sasha in her costume on the way to a party at a neighbor’s home.

Obama, usually cool in public during a campaign that has turned him into the frontrunner for the White House, did not disguise his irritation when his surprise walk caused news photographers and camera crews to scramble for position on the sidewalk.

He grew especially testy when a Polish television cameraman tried to approach them.

“Come on guys, get back on the bus,” he pleaded with journalists, many of whom had accompanied him from the airport to Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

Obama, wearing sunglasses but no costume, and his daughter, dressed up as what campaign aides said was a “corpse’s bride,” then broke into a sprint, leaving the journalists behind.

Secret Service agents and vans followed closely behind, and stunned trick-or-treaters broke into shouts of “Obama, Obama” as he rushed past.

There was no neighborhood trick-or-treating for the Obama family, a nod to the potential security problems.

Instead the family attended a Halloween party behind closed doors at a friend’s home. Obama’s 10-year-old daughter Malia had planned to dress up as an “evil fairy,” the campaign said.

These rules “will force Americans to choke on dirtier air for years to come.”

The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.

The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.

Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.

Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis.

“They want these rules to continue to have an impact long after they leave office,” said Matthew Madia, a regulatory expert at OMB Watch, a nonprofit group critical of what it calls the Bush administration’s penchant for deregulating in areas where industry wants more freedom. He called the coming deluge “a last-minute assault on the public . . . happening on multiple fronts.”

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Posted by Basheert /
Here’s the number that’s showing up … call and scream at them. McCain is using the filthiest stuff imaginable…FLOOD THEIR VOICEMAIL and let’s take it viral!
SQ and I are going NUTS with these here in AZ.
Thanks guys…

No, this is not some Halloween stunt. That guy you see over there being held accountable is actually the vice president of the United States.

The U.S. District Court in D.C. ruled today that Vice President Dick Cheney will have to let his deputy chief of staff, Claire O’Donnell, give testimony in a lawsuit over his records.

Cheney, with his well-known passion for secrecy, had argued that a vice president need only preserve records central to his job as the official who presides over the U.S. Senate or records relating to specific tasks assigned by the president. That would narrow the pile considerably.

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